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Topic: cleaning (Read 4884 times)

Oxyclean and BTF Iodophor... and I'll second the usefullness of plain old Dawn dishwashing liquid. I have run into brewers who are almost superstitous about exposing their stainless steel to soap, and its often my first step in cleaning.

I've used liquid dishsoap in hot water to wash with sometimes but I rinse the bejeepers out of it, alternating between hot and cold rinses. It works fine for me. I've used oxyclean too... I can't really see where its any better than the dishsoap though. I haven't tried PBW... maybe later on I'll get some and try it.

I forgot to say I also have and use starsan and idophor for sanitizing.

For cleaning I use whatever dishwasher detergent we currently have in the house. I found that to be fairly effective.

For sanitation I use StarSan or heat. Always having a bucket of StarSan sanitizer around has made many things a lot easier. In my earlier days I used Iodophor and always had to mix a new batch when I needed to sanitize something.

And then there is the nuclear weapon of cleaning agents: hot caustic soda. It is as quick in taking the skin off your bones as it cleans away any gunk. I rarely use it because of the precautions I need to take but I have used it to clean my tap lines that wouldn’t get clean with a hot dish washer soap solution.

There's a liquid version of Barkeepers friend that the label says has citric acid.But like Denny says, the powdered version has oxalic acid.

Give a listen to the Brewing Newtork's Brew strong episode on cleaning. there's some interviews with the guy from 5 star that are pretty interesting. And John Palmer is a metallurgist and knows his stuff when it comes to cleaning SS.